After shearing a large sheet of metal, plastic, plastic-coated or paper-coated metal or the like as received from the fabricator, to obtain units of predetermined smaller size for further fabrication, the sheared units usually are moved from the shear onto a conveyor and thence stacked for further operations.
According to usual practice, it is customary for the individual sheared units to tumble from a conveyor onto a stack to form a disorderly pile awaiting subsequent handling.
Such procedure generally is acceptable with hard surfaced material. However, scratching is likely to occur when the thin sheet material is less immune to rough handling, as with plastic, plastic-coated sheeting, highly polished stainless, paper-coated stainless steel or the like.
A major object of our invention is to provide means and a method for handling such sheets as may be susceptible to surface marring in such manner as to avoid likelihood of tumbling or other haphazard movement that might result in surface damage.
The most pertinent prior art to our knowledge is that of record in our parent application noted hereabove.